


Worlds of Her Own

by lost_spook



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Bibliophilia, Books, Fluff, Gen, Libraries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 09:44:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1740095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If each book is a gateway to another world, then Belle’s just been given a galaxy to play with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worlds of Her Own

Belle loves books. It’s the one abiding constant of her life. She can’t remember not being able to read. She can remember a little of learning, when it wasn’t quite so easy, but she’s always spent her leisure hours surrounded by paper bound in calfskin or leather, full of words printed in ink, or handwritten where each volume is an irreplaceable labour of love – a gift from one book lover to another.

It’s been a long, long time without them and now she’s standing in a room full of new and unknown possibilities: a library. It’s her library now, too; a very special gift she’s just been given.

She wrinkles her nose a little, because these books haven’t been as _loved_ as they should have been, and on pulling one out she’s startled to meet her first paperback. It has a different feel to the grand old tomes she’s used to, and why, why would anyone put that colour on the side of the pages? It’s cruelty to innocent literature, as far as she’s concerned, and the binding leaves so much to be desired, she’s actually shocked. But inside, there are the words. It’s the only way she knows of to really learn about her new world and she can’t help but start straight in. She had vague plans to look around the library and take stock before she did anything so rash, but as soon as she flicks through the pages she’s ensnared by the words.

Next thing she knows she’s blinking at the end of it, sitting on the floor with the corner of the shelf poking her in the neck and wondering what it says about her new home that they write stories about pregnant policewomen who go on the run with their ex-criminal tycoon lovers but still find time to stop and do things that cause her to raise her eyebrows several times (and in one case, turn the book sideways in her puzzlement). In fact, there were so many things that were new, she knows exactly what she needs next – a good dictionary.

That’s when she finds the reference section.

*

Ruby comes looking for her. “You’re still here? I thought something had happened to you!”

“What?” says Belle, curled up on the floor between an oversized dictionary, three volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and a pile of history books about a land without magic. She’d thought until now it would be easier without things like dragons and ogres and dark magic, but apparently sometimes it’s worse.

“Didn’t you even notice how late it was?” asks Ruby. 

Belle jumps up, embarrassed. What’s worse, she still hasn’t even started on sorting out the library. “Oh,” she says and then gestures at the books. “I – I got caught up in reading.” She gives Ruby an apologetic, hopeful grimace. “Sorry?” 

“It’s okay,” says Ruby, and she’s smiling. “I’ll know exactly where to look next time. How about you lock up and get some dinner?”

Belle hesitates. It’s not that she doesn’t want food, but part of her can’t bear to walk away from an open book. She feels like a monster herself: devouring something it had hungered after for twenty-eight years. She colours.

“Hey,” says Ruby, laughing at her reaction. “You’re the librarian. I’m sure you can let yourself borrow a couple of books.”

Belle has to laugh, too, but she does stop and pick up two books before they leave. There is this to be said for a paperback: she can push it into her bag easily, something that’s often been more awkward in the past. (Like the thousand page _Grimoire of Magickal Beasts & Devilish Creatures_, which is far too big to carry around. She’s good at taking notes, but she can see the advantages of literal lighter reading. Of course, nothing beats a heavy hardback for when you get caught in a corner by a Devilish Creature and have to thwack it over the head with something, but she’s hopeful that maybe that happens less in Storybrooke than in the Dark Castle.)

*

It’s an odd experience to read stories when you know that they are echoes of other, real worlds. She thinks she recognises twisted versions of the tales of her childhood in some of this world’s histories, and she wonders how it works: if some events shake reality enough to let distorted reflections through, or if it’s dreams that carry things across universes, or maybe that when mortals fall to dust, it’s their memories that escape on the wind and land in others’ minds as sparks of imagination. She wonders if anyone knows.

She reads a very odd version – several, in fact – of her own story with a quizzical look on her face, and doesn’t much care for the alternate Beasts – even if she envies them their happy endings, at least a little.

After the first orgy of devouring paper and ink, word and imagination and knowledge, she rations herself and only reads after work, like a responsible librarian. Well, and on days when it’s really quiet. The books have to be made available to everyone else first; that’s even more important. Belle masters the intricacies of the Dewey Decimal System and soon becomes guardian of people’s secrets: Grumpy reads romances and glares at her while he checks them out. Ruby just looks alarmed when Belle recommends any novels she’s been reading. She says if it’s over a thousand pages, she’d rather eat it, and she easily could, too. Granny borrows the books Belle is too faint-hearted for, the true crime and the grimmest thrillers. She says she likes a bit of realism and bite in her fiction. There’s even a horribly awkward moment when Regina turns up, but the Evil Queen merely pushes a sheet of paper across the desk and waits for Belle to produce the books on the list. It’s a prescription in the shape of a booklist from Dr. Hopper, who evidently thinks bibliotherapy might be worth a try. Belle obliges and hopes fervently that Regina returns the books on time, because the last thing she wants is a war breaking out between Rumple and Regina over unpaid library fines.

Even so, there’s time for Belle to read, too, and where to start is a difficult question. The room that Ruby provided for Belle is filling up fast with more books than is allowed on one library ticket. She makes an effort to be sensible and picks out one large general history book, and starts on the stories with a shelf marked “Classics” because it seems logical to try the books this world’s people consider to be the best.

She finds herself both enchanted and a little surprised once she’s read a few, because maybe stories are even more complicated than she imagined. Or at least, so she thinks after she’s made her way through _Jane Eyre_ , _Frankenstein_ , _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_ , _The Phantom of the Opera_ , _Pride and Prejudice_ , and _Alice in Wonderland_. It’s hard to not to stare at people she doesn’t know on the street, wondering who they really are, which story is theirs. 

Unhappy endings are new things to Belle: the stories in her world run to a pattern, the same as their lives are supposed to, even if life slips up every now and then. It’s disconcerting to find this world doesn’t share those rules. Reading’s even less safe than it was before. But it’s a funny thing, she finds after her first distress, but sometimes it’s a good feeling to cry over a story. She can’t help but hope _very_ hard, though, that the real characters have a happier ending, if they exist out there somewhere. If her own story’s so mangled, why shouldn’t theirs be, too? 

Stories are about hope, Henry tells her one day when he’s in the library, echoing that thought. Belle likes Henry – he’s so excited about the library being open, more than anybody else, though most of Storybrooke drop in at some point to look around. She agrees, but some of the stories she finds seem to be chasing despair instead, and it worries her. If the answers are all in books, as she firmly believes, she’s not sure how she feels about tragedy, and bad things happening to good people.

Still, whatever the truth, the words on the page are unquestionably not the _whole_ story. The entire town’s here to prove that. So, Belle decides it’s time to move on and try another section and finds that even here, people tell stories about heroes who go on quests for magical objects and slay dragons and monsters. She’s a bit less sure about their tendency to band together and ride off to kill Dark Lords. Nobody, she thinks, ever seems to stop before riding off to the dead lands or the magical wastelands, to stop and ask why the Dark Lord is being evil and threatening the kingdom, whereas she’s always found that everybody has _some_ reason, somewhere, some buried good in them. 

Which reminds her, tomorrow she’s going to meet her own particular Dark One for a hamburger, and, judging by what she’s been reading lately, that might be the first such occasion in all the multiverse. It’s a new kind of story, and one she’ll have to write herself, but she’s decided that’s the best kind.


End file.
